


Pulling Our Weight

by pyrimidine



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:32:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrimidine/pseuds/pyrimidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're sucked into a book of fairytales and have to act out each story in order to get out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulling Our Weight

**17.**

After the ‘Twelve Dancing Princesses’ one, Arthur has saved Eames from exactly seventeen fairy tales. He would suspect that there’s some overarching moral to all this, but they’re fairy tales, not fables, so he doesn’t examine it any further.

*

 **18.**

Arthur wakes up in the woods, right in front of the mouth of a cave. He’s now been outfitted with heavy armor and a sword. Its sheath is hanging by his leg, as is a pouch with a lyre in it. He has no idea what to do with any of these things. Katanas are familiar to him, but this sword is weighted all wrong in comparison and it feels awkward in his hands.

He takes a moment to fix his armor, then walks into the cave. It tunnels into the mountainside for about a quarter mile before ending in an enormous chamber. Right in the middle of the chamber is a huge dragon.

Arthur fixes his armor again. “Excuse me,” he says loudly. “Can you fill me in about what’s going on?”

“I’m Fusuy, the mighty dragon,” the dragon booms.

“That’s Yusuf backwards,” Arthur says. “Are you sure your name isn’t Yusuf?”

This isn’t a surprise. Ariadne has already popped up three fairy tales ago to hand Eames a shiny red apple, which Eames was stupid enough to eat. Cobb, a near-sighted sorceror who turned Eames into this giant hairy mammoth-type thing, was seven tales ago.

“I just said my name was Fusuy, why would it be Yusuf?” the dragon asks. He belches in a gust of hot, stale air. Arthur has time to register _beef tacos_ before covering his face with his hand and coughing.

“Right. Well, I think you’re guarding a prisoner that I’m here to save,” Arthur says tiredly.

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the dragon actually looks shifty-eyed. “No prisoner here,” he says. “Maybe you have the wrong cave.”

“I can see the prisoner from here,” Arthur says.

The dragon moves his right front foot so that it blocks Eames from view. “Okay, maybe I do have a prisoner. But I only have one weak spot and you’ll never figure it out, so you might as well give up now.”

Judging by the pile of burnt armor and weapons in a corner of the cave, Fusuy is telling the truth. Buried in the middle of it all is rotting meat, branches of berries, and other food bits that failed to lure the dragon into being distracted. Arthur finds himself wondering if other people had been here to save Eames, or if this was all just for the sake of the dream.

Arthur snaps back to attention when the dragon says, “The cave is closed for the day. You can come back tomorrow, or I can just eat you now and save us both some time.”

“No worries, I figured it out,” Arthur says, pulling out the lyre. He’s expecting it to sound like rubber bands caught in a paper shredder, but apparently he’s an expert lyre player in dreams and ends up plucking out some complicated version of ‘Greensleeves’.

Fusuy’s eyelids droop on the second note and he’s passed out snoring in no time.

“You couldn’t have picked a better song?” Eames asks as he squeezes past Fusuy’s immobile foot.

“Yes, it’s too bad I never finished transcribing ‘Born to Run’ for the lyre,” Arthur says. “Sorry about that.”

Eames smiles. He knocks his hand against Arthur’s breastplate and says, “Thanks.”

“Shut up,” Arthur says.

And then he kisses him. Because in fairy tales, that’s the kick.

*

 **24.**

Before this, it was Eames as a toad. Now it’s the woods, again.

Arthur’s entire body is once more being weighed down by chain-mail and armor. He’s always excelled at speed over strength; he can do a four minute mile but at this point, it feels like he’s wearing a steel factory.

He walks until he reaches a clearing. A lone tower is rooted in the ground, stretching up and up. There’s a single open space in the wall, near the top.

Arthur sighs. “Eames,” he says at a normal volume, even though there’s no way it’ll carry all the way up the tower. He squints at the sky and hopes in vain that doing the motions will be enough. The sky just looks back at him impassively.

“Eames!” he calls. “ _Eames_! EAMES.”

Eames finally appears at the window. He props his elbow up on the sill, shoving his chin onto his fist and smiling toothily as if taking a school picture. They’ve both grown tired of working their way out of these tales a long time ago, but sometimes Eames still finds moments to enjoy himself.

“Are you going to let your stupid hair down or what,” Arthur says loudly.

“I don’t know if I should, you don’t look very enthusiastic about it,” Eames says. It’s true that Arthur is scowling and not even bothering to hold up his sword in a knightly way or whatever. The tip is dragging against the dirt and his facemask-cum-helmet thing keeps slipping down over his face.

He exhales in an exasperated huff, struggling to tip the mask back far enough so that it won’t totally blind him but not so far that it’ll fall off completely. There’s the fact that he’s still holding a sword, though -- he ends up accidentally punching himself in the head with the handle and newly re-realizes why a sword has never been his weapon of choice.

After all this, he glances up the tower and sees Eames staring down at him, no longer in that ridiculous position. Instead he’s got his fingers curled over the edge and his expression is unreadable.

“Eames, oh Eames, won’t you let your hair down,” Arthur snarls.

“Gladly!” Eames calls.

A long, knotted rope flops out through the window. Arthur pauses to let it register, then shoves the sword into its sheath before hefting himself up the rope. By the time he reaches the window, the mask has closed over his face once again. Each breath echoes cavernously and condenses onto his skin. He stumbles into the room before ripping the helmet off and dumping it onto the ground, breathing hard.

“That was fast,” Eames says. “You were expecting a rope of real hair, weren’t you?”

“Maybe,” Arthur pants. He holds out his hand and says, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“I don’t know, I do so enjoy looking like an ice dancer,” Eames says, pinching the arms of his tunic.

“Your normal wardrobe isn’t much better,” Arthur points out and steps in for the kiss.

*

 **32.**

Arthur breaks through the surface of the water and says, “I’m a mermaid.”

“So I gathered,” Eames says. He’s sitting in a plain rowboat, looking like the proverbial fisherman lost at sea. The water is a kind of teal that Arthur’s only seen in paintings; there’s nothing else around in all directions, save for sun and sky.

“This is horrible,” Arthur says, but he swims around in a big circle before tipping onto his back, trying to stay afloat with minimal movement. Water laps up around his ears, plugging out sound intermittently.

Eames just says, “It isn’t so bad,” even though the only thing he’s doing is sitting in a boat straight from an Ansel Adams photograph and watching Arthur.

“Not that I’m hating this break,” Arthur says, “but if this is the original fairy tale, then I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to die at the end.”

“Then give us the kick before it can get there,” Eames says as if it’s the most logical thing in the world, and maybe it is.

Arthur puts his hands on the rim of the boat and lifts himself up as Eames leans over a bit. As soon as their mouths touch, the scene disappears.

*

 **46.**

The tales have been getting shorter, sometimes lasting only long enough for Arthur to see Eames as a small figure locked away in a castle or riding away on a horse before everything dissolves into smoke and reappears as a different setting.

This time, though, it’s sticking around for a bit.

A glass heel is heavier than Arthur thought it would be. He hefts it in his grip, then looks over at Eames, who’s already sitting down in an ornate chair. People are dancing around them, save for a few thoroughly disgruntled women standing by the wall.

Eames smiles, having caught on at the same time as Arthur. “Ready whenever you are.” When he sees Arthur staring dubiously at his feet, he says, “They’re clean, I took my bimonthly bath just last week.”

“Very funny.” Arthur doesn’t know why he’s stalling. It takes some effort to get down on one knee.

Eames smiles again. “This is hardly my first time in heels, you know that.”

“My toes still know that,” says Arthur.

“That was my lack of experience with tango dancing rather than heels,” Eames counters.

Arthur shifts so that he’s kneeling on his other leg. He wraps his hand over Eames’s heel, which is pale and soft, and guides the shoe on. Of course, it fits perfectly.

“Not bad,” Eames comments, inverting and everting his foot to examine it. “But I think I still prefer Lanvin overall.”

“The ones from Fall 2007 looked the best,” Arthur agrees. When he tilts his head up, Eames touches his chin. Arthur closes his eyes and wonders when this became the easiest part of it all.

*

 **50.**

He’s in the hallway of an enormous castle. It’s eerily quiet, but Arthur has no compunction about slamming doors open and exploring the space. He doesn’t find anything until the kitchens, where dozens of people are slumped over everywhere: on the table, on the floor, over barrels. The dining room is the same kind of scene.

Arthur’s heart begins to pound noticeably. Not because the bodies; he’s seen death too many times to know that those people are only sleeping. He walks up a staircase, then another, then another. On the third floor, he drops his sword and undoes as much armor as he can before continuing up. The stairs gradually become narrower before turning into a spiral that leads up a tower. After all this is over, he probably won’t be able to create anything but towers in his dreams for weeks.

Finally, he reaches the top and walks into a small room containing a window, a bed, and a sleeping Eames.

Eames is sprawled gracelessly on his back, knees bent, arms angled outward so that the pale skin on the underside of his forearms is facing up. It’s as if someone had just dumped him there. Then again, Arthur has seen him fall asleep in the exact same position after one too many drinks, so who knows.

He kneels by the bed, watching Eames’s soft breaths and absently taking in the fact that Eames doesn’t snore. Experimentally, Arthur touches his hand, pushing it open the best he can, but Eames’s fingertips keep curling in. Sunlight is streaming through the window, catching on the slope of his nose, the divot just underneath his bottom lip.

Arthur places his hand on Eames’s forehead. It all feels so intimate that he doesn’t know if he wants to stay here for hours or stand up and head back down the stairs, leaving everything exactly as it was, undisturbed.

“Eames,” he tries, running his fingers over Eames’s palm. Eames doesn’t wake up.

Finally, Arthur leans down. He hovers for a small moment, breathing along with Eames for three, four breaths, and kisses him softly on the last exhale.

After a pause, Eames is kissing him back, and --

*

 **\--.**

\-- Arthur opens his eyes, feeling the Somnacin in his veins, the weight of the die in his pocket, and Eames’s knuckles pressed against his.


End file.
